Agenda

January 16, 2018

9:00 AM

Opening Remarks

9:15 AM

Re-org, Re-Allocate, ReThink: The Digital Strategies of 2018

How will the media budgets get spent in the coming cycle, and how will campaigns reorganize themselves around digital and data-driven strategies? What have we learned about the potential and limitations of online spend,the balance of both paid and earned media in a more cluttered, fragmented and polarized environment? Party representatives and leading political marketers discuss how their strategic plans for digital efforts in the 2018 cycle have been informed by the lessons of 2016-17.

After an historic win in the last Presidential cycle, how will the RNC turn its enormously effective digital campaigning arm to the state campaigns of 2018? How is the role of digital evolving within the party organization and in tandem with state campaigns? We will explore the RNC’s successful online GOTV apparatus and the enhanced role it will play this year. And finally, how will the famously efficient and massive social media buying effort change in light of platform revisions and a new scrutiny of digital messaging?

The social channel just got more complicated. Not only do campaigns need strategies in place to fight misinformation and outright fake news, but new safeguards erected by the platforms will impact both paid and organic tactics. As Facebook, Twitter and YouTube try to shore up against past abuses to their respective systems, how do political campaigns need to come at this highly effective channel differently in 2018?

Direct Mail and Email were once the undisputed kings of campaign fund-raising. But the integration of new social and online channels, small scale donors, and the priorities of database building all have added nuance to old blast and collect approaches. What is the path to contribute now?

In the last decade, the digital landscape has shifted dramatically and political organizations have had two choices: to stay nimble or be left behind. DNC Chief Mobilization Officer Caitlin Mitchell will share insights and recent work from the newly created DNC Mobilization team, which combines the former digital and direct marketing teams into a people-first innovation hub and integrates digital into everything the DNC does from organizing to messaging to fundraising.

In an America that is as politically polarized as it is attention fragmented, does media really matter anymore? How are voters making up their minds, not only over whom to choose but whether and when to contribute, or even to vote at all? With all of the data being stockpiled by political operatives about attitudes and behaviors, do we really know any better which media buy moves what needle among voters?

Pennsylvania Ave. Meets Madison Ave.: The Marketing Lessons of The New Politics

Massive, nano-targeted programmatic buying, real-time dynamic messaging, fighting off misinformation, new styles of data driven TV buying - all have become hallmarks of recent political campaigning. But so has cultural insurgency, rejection of urban, cultural elites and celebrations of so-called "flyover America." In this special session at the corner of Pennsylvania and Madison Avenues, we explore how recent elections and political culture have (or should) impact consumer brand marketing.

Are the channels of digital media being artfully used by deft political operatives or woefully abused by bad actors with little interest in democratic ideals? Is technology, let alone public policy or regulation, really up to the task of fighting fake news and dark manipulation of the technology without impeding free speech and open electioneering?

For years, political media buyers have been using advanced data to parse TV audiences with amazing precision. But now programmatic TV, OTT, and digital video are catching up with addressable formats that target the invaluable spot across screens and to specific viewers. What does a video strategy look like now? What messaging - attack, inspiration, explainer - works best when you can target voter sub-segments? When the screen is in your pocket, not the living room? How will video everywhere and addressable TV rewrite the rules of media creation and buying in the 2018 cycle?

Campaigning In a Fishbowl

Digital marketing has never been more central to political campaign success, nor has it ever been under such public scrutiny. Even as political marketers struggle to process the mixed lessons of 2016 and 2017, the key channels of online campaign spending are being investigated, perhaps even regulated as candidates gear up for the 2018 cycle.

MediaPost’s 5th annual Marketing:Politics conference leans into the complexity and controversy of digital campaigning this year. We bring together campaign strategists and media leaders from across parties to explore how, where and how much they will be allocating to digital this cycle.